Ear Cuff Materials Guide — 925 Silver, Oxidized & Beyond

By Dmitry Strugovshchikov, founder of STRUGA

The alloy of an ear cuff decides more than the silhouette: a cuff holds the edge of the ear by compression and touches skin along the whole span of the gap — 5 to 12 millimetres of continuous contact for ten or twelve hours a day. That geometry punishes plating: the metal flexes slightly every time the cuff goes on, and the gold leaves the gap edge first. A solid alloy loses nothing over the same years — it only deepens its patina.

Updated 29 August 2026

- Sterling silver is 92.5 percent silver and 7.5 percent copper; the alloy contains no nickel, which is why it suits the vast majority of wearers.

- A cuff grips 5 to 12 millimetres of the ear's edge and flexes each time it is put on, so plating wears off the gap edge first while a solid alloy outlives the wear.

- Vermeil, as the US Federal Trade Commission defines it, is 925 sterling under gold of at least 10 karat, at least 2.5 microns thick; the label "gold-plated" with no disclosed core guarantees nothing.

- Gold-filled is not electroplate: it is a gold layer of at least 5 percent of the item's weight, mechanically bonded to the core.

- Brass is copper and zinc — standard grades carry no nickel, though copper leaves a green carbonate on skin. Nickel arrives through nickel silver (8 to 18 percent) and the underplate beneath gold.

- The STRUGA catalogue holds 16 cuffs: 12 in 925 sterling and 4 in carbon. Exactly one is darkened at the bench; the rest arrive bright and darken on the wearer.

Alloy	Composition and nickel	What time does to it
925 sterling silver	92.5% silver, 7.5% copper · no nickel	darkens and patinates, fully reversible
Oxidized 925 sterling	same alloy, surface darkened with sulphur · no nickel	high points brighten with friction, recesses hold the dark
Vermeil	925 sterling + gold from 10k, from 2.5 microns · no nickel if the core is disclosed	gold wears off the gap edge, silver appears beneath
Gold plate over base metal	any thickness of gold over any metal · nickel possible	exposes the core at flex zones within a year or two
Brass and bronze	copper with zinc; copper with tin · no nickel in standard grades	oxidizes to a green carbonate that transfers to skin
Titanium and niobium	pure metals, colour from anodization · no nickel	essentially unchanged, colour cannot wear off
316L stainless	iron, chromium, 10–14% nickel in a passive layer — bound, but not zero	unchanged, still risky with severe allergy

Most cuff buyers learn this the second time around. The first cuff is bought on design alone, and within a month the surface dulls, the gap loosens, or the skin protests. The second is chosen the way a watch is chosen — alloy first, build second, design third.

I am Dmitry Strugovshchikov, founder of STRUGA. The brand's cuffs are made by hand in Bali by master silversmiths, in solid 925 sterling with no rhodium plating. Every alloy note here came from the bench or from customer emails — what wore well, what failed, what surprised us.

Why alloy matters more for a cuff than for a stud or a hoop

It comes down to contact area and how constant that contact is. A stud sits in a healed channel and a hoop swings off an ear wire — both touch a small patch of skin in a stable, low-pressure way. An ear cuff grips the edge of the ear by compression, and the metal touches skin along the entire span of the gap: 5 to 12 millimetres of continuous contact under low but constant pressure.

That changes the alloy calculus. A nickel-cored hoop might be tolerated for years because the contact is intermittent. The same cuff produces a reaction within weeks. Coatings that hold up on a pendant flake within months on a cuff, because the cuff is bent slightly each time it goes on and off.

The difference compounds. A sterling cuff worn daily for five years is the same piece that left the bench, with a deepened patina; a plated cuff is, by year three, a base-metal cuff with a few gold patches near the rim. Fitting the gap is covered in the long-term wear guide.

What is 925 sterling silver and why is it the baseline for cuffs

The 925 standard is 92.5 percent silver and 7.5 percent copper. The copper is structural: pure silver (.999) is too soft to hold a cuff gap and dents under finger pressure. Sterling is the historic compromise — enough silver for the metal to stay warm and live with its finish, enough copper for the form to hold.

For cuffs the alloy has three properties that matter:

• It carries no nickel — which is why sterling suits the vast majority of wearers without caveats.
• It is malleable. The gap adjusts under finger pressure without cracking: owners re-calibrate their cuffs dozens of times across years of wear.
• The surface is alive. Sterling polishes and oxidizes deeply, so the finish records how the piece is worn instead of staying factory-fixed forever.

What sterling is not: a mirror-stable metal. Bright sterling tarnishes slowly — almost invisibly while worn, faster in a drawer. That tarnish is silver sulphide, a microns-thin layer that wipes off with a soft cloth.

How to check that a cuff is really silver

Three checks, all of them possible before buying:

• The stamp. A 925 mark sits inside the band. Stamps describe the metal, not the coating, so a missing stamp on a piece sold as silver is already a question.
• The wording of the listing. "Solid sterling silver" or "925 throughout" is a claim about the alloy. "Silver-tone", "silver finish", "silver-look" are claims about colour and say nothing about the metal underneath.
• Price against weight. A silver core is silver-priced, so a cuff at costume-jewellery money cannot be solid sterling.

Every cuff in the ear cuffs collection is either solid 925 or carbon, stamped and traceable. The brand does not make plated pieces: a plated cuff looks bright on day one and worse on day three hundred.

How is oxidized silver different from Living Silver

These two words are confused constantly, and the confusion costs buyers money. Oxidization is a technique: the silver was darkened at the bench, immediately, by a controlled sulphur reaction. The alloy underneath is unchanged 925 sterling, but the visible face becomes a microns-thin layer of silver sulphide. Living Silver is a property: 925 sterling with no rhodium plating, which arrives bright and darkens on its own, on the wearer.

The difference is practical, not terminological:

Compared on	Oxidization	Living Silver
What it is	a technique at the bench	a property of the metal
Starting point	the piece arrives dark	the piece arrives bright
Where time takes it	high points brighten with friction	the whole surface darkens, deepest in recesses
What sets the pace	how much polish is taken back	the wearer's skin chemistry
Alloy underneath	925 sterling	925 sterling

What they share: skin meets the same hypoallergenic 925 alloy either way. The dark surface is a reaction with the silver itself, not a coating, so the worry that oxidized silver is harder on sensitive skin has no basis. Either patina resets with silver cleaning fluid.

Which STRUGA cuffs are darkened at the bench and which darken on their own

By catalogue census on 29 August 2026:

Line	Alloy	Surface	Count
Blade, Brutalism, Thorn, Signature Asymmetric	925 sterling	Living Silver — arrives bright	11
Brutalism V.3 Dark Treatment (M)	925 sterling	darkened at the bench	1
Blade and Signature in carbon	carbon	Classic and Arctic Graphite palettes	4

So a dark STRUGA cuff usually means patina earned over years of wear, not oxidization applied at the bench. For a surface that is dark from day one, the line answers with a single piece — Brutalism V.3 Dark Treatment. The full logic of the surface is on the Living Silver page.

What do gold-plated, vermeil and gold-filled actually mean

The word "gold" on a cuff listing covers four different constructions, and the distance between them is measured in years of wear:

• Solid gold — gold all the way through, no core.
• Gold-filled — a gold layer mechanically bonded to a core; under US Federal Trade Commission rules that layer is at least 5 percent of the item's weight.
• Vermeil — solid 925 sterling under gold of at least 10 karat, at least 2.5 microns thick.
• Gold-plated — the loosest term: any thickness of gold over any metal.

Cuff geometry punishes plating harder than any other form: the metal flexes at the gap every time the piece goes on, and the layer thins fastest exactly there — a year of daily wear takes the gold off the gap edge first. A sterling core is hypoallergenic once exposed; a brass core or a nickel underplate is not.

How to spot vermeil against cheap plating

Three checks: listing language — "vermeil" or "gold over sterling" with a stated micron thickness is meaningful, "gold-tone" with no core disclosed is not; price — a real vermeil cuff costs meaningfully more, because the silver core is silver-priced; stamp — vermeil pieces usually carry a 925 mark inside the band. STRUGA does not make gold-plated cuffs, because no plating process has yet held up to daily wear.

Can you wear two different metals on the same ear

You can, and the rule that everything must match is a 1980s invention. A contemporary stack often runs two or three metals on the same ear: a bright cuff at the upper ear, a dark stud at the mid-lobe, a yellow gold hoop below. The visual logic is contrast and hierarchy, not uniformity.

For cuffs, mixing works when the metals are quality-matched. Two solid alloys — sterling and solid gold, oxidized sterling and bright sterling — sit cleanly: different colours, similar surface depth, both will age. A solid alloy beside a plated piece looks unresolved over time: the solid deepens with wear while the plate lightens and chips, and within a year the contrast reads as accidental.

The simplest stack to start with is dark plus bright 925 sterling. One alloy, two surfaces, both pieces ageing in the same direction. The deeper read is in the ear stack curation guide; for the step before it, see the earring types guide.

Which metals work for sensitive skin

"Hypoallergenic" has a measurable boundary. The REACH regulation (Annex XVII, entry 27) caps nickel release from items in prolonged skin contact at 0.5 micrograms per square centimetre per week, and at 0.2 for posts inserted into piercings. A cuff holds the ear's edge without a piercing, so it falls in the first group; release is measured by the EN 1811 method, in artificial sweat over one week.

Outside precious metals, the alloys that clear that boundary comfortably are surgical-grade titanium, niobium, and implant-grade stainless steel. Titanium is the lightest and takes anodization: blues, purples and bronzes come from light interference at the oxide layer rather than from paint, and therefore cannot wear off. The trade-off is design vocabulary — titanium is harder to hand-finish, so titanium cuffs tend toward simpler machined silhouettes.

Niobium feels similar, with a warmer anodization palette. 316L stainless is the most affordable option, but the nickel is there: 10 to 14 percent, bound into a passive layer. With a confirmed severe allergy, titanium, niobium or sterling is the safer answer. STRUGA makes no titanium or niobium cuffs — the vocabulary here is sterling and carbon.

What to avoid if you have already had a metal reaction

• "Silver-tone" or "silver-plated" cuffs with no disclosed core.
• "Gold-plated" cuffs with no disclosed core or vermeil specification.
• Listings marked "alloy", "mixed metal", or "fashion metal" — usually nickel silver.
• Nickel silver, also sold as German silver: it holds no silver at all and 8 to 18 percent nickel.
• Cheap steel without a "316L" or "implant-grade" specification.

Is a brass or bronze ear cuff worth buying

For a single evening yes, for daily wear no — and the reason is not the one usually written about. Brass is copper with zinc, bronze is copper with tin. The first surprise is the green smudge: copper oxidizes to a green carbonate in contact with sweat and skin oils, and the green transfers to skin. It washes off, but it does not read as precious metal.

The second surprise concerns nickel. Standard brass grades carry none: cartridge brass C260 is 68.5 to 71.5 percent copper and 28.5 to 31.5 percent zinc, and free-cutting C360 adds 2.5 to 3.7 percent lead. Nickel enters costume jewellery through a different alloy — nickel silver, which looks like pale brass and carries 8 to 18 percent nickel — and through the nickel underplate laid down beneath gold for adhesion.

So the risk is not the word "brass" but an undisclosed composition: behind the label "alloy" you may find nickel-free brass, nickel silver, or gold over a nickel underplate, and nothing on the listing separates them. For daily wear the shelf fails on copper and lead as much as on nickel.

How do you care for a cuff in each alloy

One principle holds across all of them: clean what touches skin, polish what catches light, store what is not being worn. Past that, the routine splits by alloy.

Alloy	Every day	What not to do
Bright 925 sterling	wipe with a soft cloth before bed, polish lightly every few months	leave skin oils on overnight — they accelerate tarnish
Oxidized 925 sterling	same wipe; polish only the inner band and the high points	run a polishing cloth over the dark zones — polish removes the darkening
Vermeil	soft cloth only	any abrasive: the gold is microns thick and friction shortens its life
Gold plate over base metal	dry cloth only	perfume, hairspray, chlorinated water; expecting indefinite life
Titanium and niobium	a wipe with a soft cloth	nothing in particular — anodized colours do not fade

For tarnish past wipe-and-cloth, the tarnished silver guide covers deeper cleaning without damaging the patina; general care is in the silver jewellery care guide.

Continue from the journal to the STRUGA ear cuffs — twelve in 925 sterling and four in carbon, in sizes S, M and L.